How much VRAM for 4k Modding?

[Galschar]

Hello,

I just wanted to know how much VRAM you would recommend for modding my Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE with 4K Textures, etc.? And playing in 4K of course.

Thanks!
Jonathan

[HeyYou]

More is better, there is no such thing as too much. :D

[xrayy]

and it would help to mod with a 4k capable card :smile: to monitor your results. so it depends also on the game. 8GB vram is minimum. many bethesda games are mod friendly but they are also very special in delivering fps because of their dx9 or dx11 cpu bottleneck. nividia drivers seem to work better with bethesda games. you need a performance around a 2080 ti, 3070 or a 6800(xt) as a bottomline to play these games with reasonable fps in 4k. a cpu (6 core and better) with high single core ipc will also help a little. my older 1080ti was too weak using ultra settings. if you do not fear some slide show effect you can even try a card in the 1080ti class. i recommend a card supporting hdmi 2.1 to be able to adress 4k with optimal monitor and colour bandwidth settings. even 2080ti is too old to support it.

[HeyYou]

and it would help to mod with a 4k capable card :smile: to monitor your results. so it depends also on the game. 8GB vram is minimum. many bethesda games are mod friendly but they are also very special in delivering fps because of their dx9 or dx11 cpu bottleneck. nividia drivers seem to work better with bethesda games. you need a performance around a 2080 ti, 3070 or a 6800(xt) as a bottomline to play these games with reasonable fps in 4k. a cpu (6 core and better) with high single core ipc will also help a little. my older 1080ti was too weak using ultra settings. if you do not fear some slide show effect you can even try a card in the 1080ti class. i recommend a card supporting hdmi 2.1 to be able to adress 4k with optimal monitor and colour bandwidth settings. even 2080ti is too old to support it.

I don't know that any more than two cores have any advantage. Beth games are notorious for hardly being able to utilize two, let alone six, or more..... Granted, the system itself may be able to make use of the additional cores, but, the game itself really doesn't. I would expect that a Quad core should be the minimum though, and higher clock speed giving the most performance advantage.

[Galschar]

I have Ryzen 7 5800X so on the processor side I'm good. I'm asking about VRAM because I think I'll buy a new one soon as prices started to fall down (finally). And I have a hard time choosing between a 3080 or 6800 XT. The NVIDIA one has only 10GB VRAM and the AMD has 16GB. But I worry that the AMD might not be good enough because I heard AMD doesn't always have very stable drivers. Also NVIDIA currently has better RTX support/optimizations and DLSS.

[HeyYou]

Have a read of this article. Apparently, which card is *better* depends on what resolution you want to play at.

[xrayy]

_{and as i said: if you like to mod older bethesda games like skyrim and fo4, fnv amd is performancewise not optimal. if you prefer vulkan an dx12 you cant do anything wrong with both cards. cpu is perfectly capable.}

_{i`m planning the same like you do. but i will probably chose nvidia due to my focus on the older bethesda games. even if with lower amount of vram. if prices do not drop to normal i will wait until 2022. i do not feed the scalper.}

 

_{@ heyyou: i do not get your comment exactly. you can not buy a zen 3 amd or an intel with highest single core ipc with less than 6 core. and even if you can at least i would not recommend anyone to combine it with a 4k capable high end gpu and that was the purpose of my recommendation. something to skyrim/fo4 core utilization here if you like. i did some testing and research on that :wink:}

[HeyYou]

_{and as i said: if you like to mod older bethesda games like skyrim and fo4, fnv amd is performancewise not optimal. if you prefer vulkan an dx12 you cant do anything wrong with both cards. cpu is perfectly capable.}

_{i`m planning the same like you do. but i will probably chose nvidia due to my focus on the older bethesda games. even if with lower amount of vram. if prices do not drop to normal i will wait until 2022. i do not feed the scalper.}

 

_{@ heyyou: i do not get your comment exactly. you can not buy a zen 3 amd or an intel with highest single core ipc with less than 6 core. and even if you can at least i would not recommend anyone to combine it with a 4k capable high end gpu and that was the purpose of my recommendation. something to skyrim/fo4 core utilization here if you like. i did some testing and research on that :wink:}

Prices on cards are coming back down. Granted, the MSRP at this point got jacked up a fair bit since the shortage. As the world returns to some semblance of "normal" after the pandemic, prices *should* come down even further. Maybe later this year, but, certainly next year. We can hope anyway. :D

 

It's true. Finding sub 4-core processors these days, that you intend to use for gaming, are rarer than hens teeth. Maybe in an i5 flavor, but, I don't know of anyone that would recommend an i5 for a serious gaming rig. :D That said, Beth games run pretty well on older hardware. I newer vid card is probably the best investment for performance on those machines though.

[Galschar]

The challenge here is more about graphics card. The CPU, be it 4 cores or 8 or 16 cores doesn't matter as the game engine won't use that. But the graphics card will pretty much always be at 99% utilization. But when it comes to modding, textures are so important and going 4K is like taking such a wide leap forward, that 10GB won't be enough. I believe it's Microsoft Flight Simulator, for example, that reaches 10GB+ VRAM usage at 4K resolution. So a 3080 just isn't future-proof at 4K resolution.

 

And about prices they finally came down. It's still not MSRP but actually way more reasonable now. If you only look for the cheapest card you can find you can now get pretty close to MSRP. It's gonna be a card like PNY, Zotac or EVGA or whatever. But I have an ASUS B550-E motherboard so I am only looking at ASUS graphics cards lol. And ASUS is always more expensive. So I can't expect to get one at MSRP either way. It's always gonna be like 100-300 € above MSRP even with normal prices. That's why I now ordered an ASUS 6800 XT TUF Gaming for 1200 €. I m crying cause it's so much money but hey it's the best AMD offers and "only" 550 above MSRP. The same model but as a 6900 XT is currently 1549 €, so it's also 550 above MSRP so either way it doesn't matter which one I take: it's expensive. But I chose the 6800 XT so I can save 350 € to buy a new monitor lol. Cause 5-10 fps more is not worth 350 € I think. Fortunately, the 6800 XT is on the same level as a 3080 and still very very close to a 3080 Ti or 3090. The only difference is mainly RTX and DLSS. But hey if developpers finally optimize their RTX games for AMD graphics cards and start using FSR, I believe it won't really matter anymore, even if NVIDIA is "better".

Edited July 1, 2021 by Galschar

[xrayy]

The challenge here is more about graphics card. The CPU, be it 4 cores or 8 or 16 cores doesn't matter as the game engine won't use that. But the graphics card will pretty much always be at 99% utilization. But when it comes to modding, textures are so important and going 4K is like taking such a wide leap forward, that 10GB won't be enough. I believe it's Microsoft Flight Simulator, for example, that reaches 10GB+ VRAM usage at 4K resolution. So a 3080 just isn't future-proof at 4K resolution. ...

i absolutely agree with the cpu and mostly also for gpu. but there is a problen (draw calls) you can not solve with a faster gpu. it's the known limitation of dx9 and dx11 interface refarding draw calls. if this interface limitation during data exchange is reached between cpu und gpu framerate suddenly drops and gpu can not be fully ulilized. it is a problem of complex open world games and simulators including skyrim, fo4, fsx, fs2020 and xplane as long as they rely on dx11 or even dx9 and its limitation. this problem is solved with dx12 and vulkan and that is the reason fs2020 changes this summer from dx11 to dx12. and xplane changed from open gl to vulkan. people with super high end pcs suffered from low fps experience.

only a capable new interface can solve this bottleneck with complex real time object rendering. i think we will not see that bethesda will do us the favour to switch fo4 or skyrim to dx12 or vulkan. it would be great for performance but it is also a lot of development. it is like developing a new game engine.

 

so just don't be surprised if fo4 or skyrim do not scale with the power of your new gpu especially if you decide to chose amd, which works fine with most dx12 and vulkan games but not wtih all dx11 and open world/high draw call applications. apart from this 10GB vram is sufficient for 99% of the games played in 4k. if you watch youtube benchmarks you will not see a bottleneck for 4k gaming due to 10GB limitation. nvidia suffers also from this dx11 bottleneck but not as severe as the amd gpu/driver combination in direct comparison. you can test this with futuremark test suite.